.

The population of Kansas had changed with the years, as immigrants
from Europe had come into the state, and Susan was again confronted
with the powerful opposition of foreign-born voters for whose support
the political parties bargained. The liquor interests were also
active, and the Republicans, who had brought prohibition to Kansas,
now left the question discreetly alone, even making a deal with German
Democrats for their votes by promising to ignore in their platform
both prohibition and woman suffrage. Prohibition and woman suffrage
were synonymous in the minds of voters, because women had generally
voted for enforcement in municipal elections, and no matter how hard
Susan tried, she found it impossible to have woman suffrage considered
on its own merits.

Watching the straws in the wind, she saw Republican supremacy
seriously threatened by the new Populist party. Convinced that she
could no longer count on help from Kansas Republicans, she turned to
the Populist party, ignoring the pleas of Republican women who warned
her she would hurt the cause by association with such a radical group.
The Populists were generally regarded as the party of social unrest,
of a regulated economy, and unsound money, and they were looked upon
with suspicion. To many they represented a threat to the American
free-enterprise system, and they were blamed for the labor troubles
which had flared up in the bloody Homestead strike in the steel mills
of Pennsylvania and in the Pullman strike, defying the powerful
railroads. Susan was never afraid to side with the underdog, and she
could well understand why western farmers, in the hope of relief, were
eagerly flocking into the Populist party when their corn sold for ten
cents a bushel and the products they bought were high-priced and their
mortgage interest was never lower than 10 per cent.

To the Populist convention, she declared, "I have labored for women's
enfranchisement for forty years and I have always said that for the
party that endorsed it, whether Republican, Democratic, or Populist, I
would wave my handkerchief."[389]

"We want more than the waving of your handkerchief, Miss Anthony,"
interrupted a delegate, who then asked her, "If the People's party put
a woman suffrage plank in its platform, will you go before the voters
of this state and tell them that because the People's party has
espoused the cause of woman suffrage, it deserves the vote of every
one who is a supporte